A year ago, Union County Pop Warner had one football team and no cheerleaders. This past weekend, dozens of kids in shorts and t-shirts were running drills at O.J. Phillips Recreation Complex, with Union County High School Tigers in purple and gold walking them through fundamentals.
That turnaround is what Pop Warner President Mac Johns came to talk about Saturday at the program’s second annual football and cheer clinic, a recruiting event he hopes will keep the youth league’s upward trend going into the 2026 season.
“The year before that we had one team, one football team, a 10-and-under team, who had no cheerleading whatsoever,” Johns said. “Last year we managed to put together three age groups, 12 and under, 10 and under and 8 and under. And we wound up doing three cheer squads also. So, we had over probably 125 kids in the program altogether.”
Johns took the program over last year. The clinic, he said, is the first event of the year and the start of his pitch to local parents. Signups begin in about a month.
Parents paid $10 per child at the gate. In return, kids got a t-shirt and a bag lunch and split into two groups, girls on one field for cheer, boys on another for football. Food trucks lined the edge of the property, including Coast to Coast
Barbecue and Dirty South Soda, with Pepsi and Gatorade in the concession stand.
A sport with a ‘black eye’
Johns acknowledged that selling tackle football to a new generation of parents is part of the challenge.
“It’s had a black eye for so long because it’s such a rough sport, and in a lot of people’s eyes,” he said. “But it doesn’t have to be that way.”
He said events like the clinic are designed to show families what the program offers before they ever sign a registration form. Years ago, when his own children came up through the league, Johns said Union County fielded two 10-and-under teams and two 12-and-under teams. He believes the demand is still there.
“The kids are here in the county, but they want a program that’s functioning, a good program to be involved in,” he said. “If you build it, they’ll come. And that’s what I’m doing.”
Tigers on the field
Union County High School football and cheer students worked alongside Pop Warner coaches throughout the day. Coach Kelvin Simmons opened the football session by introducing his fellow coaches — Larry, A.J., Paul, John, Ash, Josh and Justin — and pointing to the high schoolers in purple jerseys lined up behind him.
“Everything you see right here in these purple jerseys is where y’all are going to be at one day,” Simmons told the players. “These boys up here are playing at the highest level that y’all could possibly get to at this time — high school football — they’re going to be assisting us today.”
He told the players to take corrections from the high school athletes the same way they’d take them from a coach and laid down what he described as the only two things they could control on the field.
“The only two things that y’all can control, we say this all the time, is your effort and your attitude,” Simmons said. “You can’t coach none of that. You’ve got to bring that to the table.”
A hometown blessing
Before drills started, Johns handed the microphone to Lake Butler Vice Mayor Rondoll L. Huggins, a Union County native, Union County High School Hall of Famer and owner of Coast-to-Coast Barbecue, to deliver opening remarks and a prayer.
Huggins told the crowd he remembered practicing as a kid on the other side of a nearby prison, with little more than the baseball field behind him to use. Seeing the program now, he said, was a different picture entirely.
“Just to come out here now and see what the community is doing, and giving back, and all of the sponsors that are making this happen for Pop Warner football, is super interesting and super exciting,” Huggins said. “That’s why my wife and I love sowing into this program. There’s no place like home.”
Johns said the clinic is just the start of what the program has planned ahead of fall signups.
“We’ll have a lot more stuff in store,” he said. “But this is just the basics to show what the program’s got to offer.”
